paul weiss rifkind wharton & g
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MERRI OK
SEE CAVE
Exxon vs team Blue AG;s
Ted Wells
Sackler
old jewish firm from wasp days; founder well respected judge
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eo? dei?
karp ceo epstein, 1st to cave 40 mill pro bono --> 1b$ surrnder template DEI
katie phang yt 2 23 36
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HUH?
MMA
April 20, 2026, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show
ALEX JONES (HOST): So, last segment I was breaking down how the federal courts wouldn't let the Democrats criminally shut us down, so they have the state court order the electricity and internet shut off. They're already starting to turn it off. We may make it to April 30th, I'm not sure, but that's the date when we know after that things are shutting down.
...
So Trump knows it's Paul Weiss law firm that ran the lawsuits against him and against me. They did a $40 million settlement with him and admitted it was illegal. But remember six months ago, Todd Blanche killed the criminal investigation into what they were doing to me. He shut down Ed Martin.
So Trump has joined with the Democrats to shut us down. And I haven't really shot a report on this yet, but I'm going to do it the next few days, that has all the details and all the proof and the documents in it, and that the CIA, FBI ran all this, came out in court in our depositions, that Trump signed on to the deep state closing us and is bragging about it.
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mediaite 3 25
President Donald Trump took a victory lap on Thursday and announced that a major law firm he targeted via executive order had capitulated to his demands.
Last week, Trump signed an EO singling out Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, a Manhattan-based firm with notable Democratic clients.
“In 2021, a Paul Weiss partner and former leading prosecutor in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought a pro bono suit against individuals alleged to have participated in the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, on behalf of the District of Columbia Attorney General,” the order stated before going on to accuse it of discrimination based on race and gender.
Trump also cited the firm’s re-hiring of Mark Pomerantz, who left Paul, Weiss to assist in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into Trump in 2022. Pomerantz left that job and rejoined Paul, Weiss after D.A.Alvin Bragg declined to bring charges against Trump. Bragg eventually prosecuted Trump and secured convictions on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The president’s order rescinded any contracts the firm may have with the federal government and it prevents Paul, Weiss lawyers from entering government buildings, which is problematic if the firm needs to review sensitive materials on government property. The order was similar to another Trump issued regarding Perkins Coie, another major firm.
On Wednesday, it was reported that Paul, Weiss had lost at least one client over the executive order.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump issued a statement announcing that Paul, Weiss had affirmed its commitment to fairness and nonpartisanship, and said it would reject DEI policies, subject to an audit “mutually agreed upon within 14 days.”
Most notably, in exchange for withdrawing the order, the firm agreed to do free work for the Trump administration to the tune of $40 million.
“Paul, Weiss will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects,” the statement read.
Perkins Coie, another firm targeted by Trump in a separate order, responded to it by suing the Trump administration.
“Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the president perceives as adverse to the views of his administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the suit stated. “Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”
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drilled 320
elite Law Students to Paul, Weiss: Drop ExxonMobil
Students at some of the nation’s top law schools are demanding that law firm Paul, Weiss, a top U.S. law firm, drop ExxonMobil as a client.
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Exxon’s Conspiracy Charges Aim To Derail Climate Lawsuits - DeSmog
by David Halperin, crossposted from Republic Report
Oil giant ExxonMobil is engaged in unprecedented efforts to sue and harass in court the very people who are investigating and suing the company over global warming. Faced with determined efforts by states and localities to hold it and other fossil fuel companies accountable for contributing to, and concealing the evidence of, climate change, Exxon is crying foul, contending that it’s the victim of politically- and financially-motivated conspiracies.
But in reality there are no improper schemes behind the cases against Exxon. Instead, what’s troubling is an apparent effort by Exxon, one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, and its powerhouse corporate lawyers, to avoid a courtroom reckoning by making specious legal arguments and outspending their foes in the legal arena.
Through its attorneys at New York’s Paul Weiss Rifkin Wharton and Garrison, and Texas-based firms Haynes & Boone and Cantey Hanger, ExxonMobil has sued the attorneys general of Massachusetts, New York, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. And the company has recently targeted for depositions and document subpoenas, and threats of more lawsuits, numerous state officials, private attorneys, and advocates.
Exxon’s legal counterattack began after the Massachusetts, New York, and Virgin Islands AGs started investigating whether Exxon misled consumers and investors about the dangers of global warming and the potential impact of those dangers on the company’s bottom line. Investigative reporting in 2015 showed that Exxon scientists have known, and told Exxon management for decades, that burning fossil fuels was heating up the planet, but rather than educate the public on the dangers and change its business strategy, Exxon instead spent millions supporting efforts to question and deny the science of climate change. The state AGs also started investigating whether ExxonMobil has properly accounted for its oil reserves in the wake of global price drops and evidence of global warming.
The Massachusetts AG, Maura Healey, has explained that her investigation focuses “on whether Exxon may have misled consumers and/or investors with respect to the impact of fossil fuels on climate change, and climate change-driven risks to Exxon’s business,” in marketing energy products and in marketing Exxon securities, in violation of the state consumer protection law.
Similarly, New York’s AG, Eric Schneiderman, has indicated that he is investigating whether ExxonMobil’s public statements about climate change conflicted with its internal research, which could have led to “state law violations, including under the Martin Act,” the New York law that prohibits financial deception and fraud. (The New York AG reached settlements with Xcel Energy and Dynegy, Inc. in 2008 and with AES Corp. in 2009 based on those companies’ failures to disclose climate change risks in securities filings.)
In 2016, Exxon launched its response, suing Healey, Schneiderman, and U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general Claude Earl Walker in federal courts in its home region of Dallas-Fort Worth. The suit against Walker succeeded when his small office halted its investigation of the oil titan, but the other two AGs persisted.
U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade approved Exxon’s demand that Healey and Schneiderman submit to depositions by Exxon lawyers — an unwarranted, and virtually unprecedented move, as prosecutors aren’t normally required to face cross examination by people whom they’re investigating. Healey and Schneiderman fought back, seeking an unusual mid-case appeal to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, after which Kinkeade backed down, cancelled the depositions, and transferred the case to a federal court in New York.
As Exxon continues its efforts to convince a Manhattan federal judge to allow it to depose the two state AGs and, ultimately, to block their probes, it faces a new wave of lawsuits: since September 2017, eight cities and counties in California, plus New York City, have sued Exxon and other fossil fuel companies, alleging harm to their communities from climate change.
Related DeSmog investigation: “There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s
The new lawsuits brought by California cities and counties — the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Richmond, and Imperial Beach, plus Santa Cruz, San Mateo, and Marin counties — could pack a powerful punch. The suits allege that ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and others knew for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and rising seas threatened human life, but continued to expand their production, while deceiving consumers about the risks. Asserting that this conduct violates various state tort rules — public nuisance, failure to warn, design defect, negligence, and trespass — the suits demand that the companies pay for the costs of environmental harms like damages to seawalls, and dangers from severe weather, droughts, and fires.
These new lawsuits have a stronger chance of success than a 2008 case filed against fossil fuel companies by the small Alaskan community of Kivalina, seeking to recover the cost of relocating their village, which was threatened by rising sea levels. A federal judge dismissed that case, concluding that the village could not trace its injuries to any particular defendant. But today there is much more evidence that global warming is real, accelerating, and caused by burning fossil fuels, and that oil companies knew such information, suppressed it, and sought to counter it. Also, lawyers for the California cities and counties believe that recent scientific advances will make it easier to prove that the specific defendants’ activities harmed or threaten their client communities.
Faced with these mounting challenges to its conduct, ExxonMobil is relentlessly trying to change the subject.
In legal papers and public communications attacking the New York and Massachusetts attorney general investigations, Exxon has charged that various meetings among lawyers, advocates, and charitable foundation officials to discuss climate change liability issues, and communications between such people and attorneys general offices, are evidence of an untoward conspiracy against the company. Exxon further alleges that the AG probes attack the company’s First Amendment rights. “The attorneys general have violated Exxon Mobil’s right to participate in the national conversation about how to address the risks presented by climate change,” Dan Toal, one of Exxon’s lawyers at the Paul Weiss firm told Bloomberg.
Now Exxon and its allies are aiming to tie the new California lawsuits into this alleged conspiracy. The company is seeking to depose more than a dozen California officials, plus private attorney Matt Pawa, in anticipation of a threatened lawsuit alleging violation of the company’s free speech and other constitutional rights. In a January 8 Texas court petition seeking the depositions, Exxon charges, “A collection of special interests and opportunistic politicians are abusing law enforcement authority and legal process to impose their viewpoint on climate change.”
A recent op-ed by New York business consultant John Burnett attacked some of the California cities and counties for hiring outside lawyers to sue Exxon and paying them on a contingent basis — meaning they get paid if and only if Exxon loses in court or settles — even though this consultant acknowledges that the cities and counties couldn’t afford to pay the lawyers any other way. He calls the arrangement “a perilous new frontier in the world of ambulance-chasing by elected officials.” Similarly, Linda Kelly, general counsel for the National Manufacturers Association, told a reporter, “From Richmond, California, to New York City, activist-driven lawsuits are being filed to undermine manufacturers in America without regard to the facts.”
But these counterattacks on those pursuing Exxon are themselves fueled by false information and unwarranted charges.
I’ve worked for many years in association with some of the people Exxon has claimed are part of the alleged conspiracy. They aren’t conspirators. They generally do their work and make their cases out in the open. A 2012 meeting in La Jolla, California, among private lawyers and climate experts that Exxon repeatedly cites as the birthplace of the secret plot was meticulously documented and photographed by the participants themselves.
There’s also nothing sinister or unusual about scientists, private lawyers, other experts, or simply concerned citizens providing evidence and arguments to state attorney general offices regarding potential legal violations, including, indeed especially, in complex matters involving powerful actors. There’s nothing wrong with state and local law enforcement officials working in parallel on probing a common issue or target — it happens frequently. Nor are public statements by officials regarding those probes proof of political bias or an impingement on Exxon’s First Amendment rights. And nor is it unusual or improper for local governments to hire private lawyers to protect their residents’ interests in court.
The AGs and local officials are doing their jobs — pursuing evidence of law-breaking. If Exxon believes it has behaved properly with respect to climate change, it should use its expensive and talented lawyers to defend itself on the merits, rather than harassing others over invented conspiracy theories.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/business/loretta-lynch-paul-weiss.html
nyt no lnx
Loretta Lynch, Former Attorney General, Is Joining a Top Law Firm Back in New York
“New York is really my professional home,” said Loretta Lynch, who will become a litigation partner at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison.
“New York is really my professional home,” said Loretta Lynch, who will become a litigation partner at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison.Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York Times
By Matthew Goldstein
May 28, 2019
In the two years since leaving her post as the world’s most powerful prosecutor, Loretta Lynch has kept a low profile. She cared for her elderly parents. She gave the occasional commencement speech. She refrained from loudly criticizing her successors in the Trump administration.
Now Ms. Lynch, the first black woman to serve as United States attorney general, is about to re-emerge in the legal world. She is joining the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison as a litigation partner in its New York office, where she will work on complex lawsuits and defend companies in criminal prosecutions.
Before President Barack Obama nominated her in 2014 to serve as attorney general, Ms. Lynch was the United States attorney in Brooklyn, a post she had also held under President Bill Clinton.
“New York is really my professional home. It’s where I have garnered my most significant experience,” she said in an interview. “I feel like New York has the most diverse and legal environment in the country if not the world.”
Brad Karp, the law firm’s chairman, was in Ms. Lynch’s graduating class at Harvard Law School.
“Loretta is one of the most highly regarded lawyers in the country, with a unique background and a unique set of experiences,” he said. “She is collegial and collaborative.”
Between her two stints as United States attorney, Ms. Lynch was a partner with the law firmHogan & Hartson. She has served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was the special counsel to the international tribunal that prosecuted those responsible for human rights violations and genocide in Rwanda in the early 1990s.
As the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, Ms. Lynch oversaw a number of high-profile public corruption cases, as well as the investigation that led to the filing of bribery charges against officials with FIFA, the international soccer organization.
As attorney general, she issued a report that found the Chicago Police Department relied too heavily on deadly force. She was an advocate for making it easier for felons to re-enter society.
But her nearly two-year tenure was partly defined by her department’s handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
In June 2016, with the presidential campaign in full swing, former President Clinton boarded Ms. Lynch’s Justice Department plane on the tarmac in Phoenix. When the visit became public, it raised questions about her ability to oversee the investigation in an impartial manner. A report from the department’s inspector general later found that the brief meeting “was an error in judgment.” Ms. Lynch has said she viewed it as purely social.
As a former attorney general, Ms. Lynch, 60, was an attractive job candidate for many law firms. She was also coveted in an industry that has faced intensifying criticism for its lack of racial and gender diversity.
A recent report by the New York City Bar Association faulted top law firms for the “slow ascension to leadership and elevated attrition rates for attorneys of color and women.” The report found that after years of steady progress, the recruitment and advancement of minorities at big law firms had stagnated and even regressed.
Paul Weiss has a better record on that front than most big law firms. The nonprofit group Lawyers of Color found this year that Paul Weiss had the highest percentage of black lawyers — 8 percent — of the 400 firms it ranked.
But Paul Weiss has not been immune to criticism. This year, when the firm posted a photo on LinkedIn of a dozen new partners — all but one of them white men — it set off outrage on social media.
Ms. Lynch said Paul Weiss was a leader in focusing on diversity and took a “holistic approach to providing equal opportunity through the ranks.” She said that was important because at big law firms there was a tendency for “a lot of women and minority to move on to other professions.”
Since leaving office, she has taken a muted tone to criticizing the Trump administration. Delivering the commencement address at the Hofstra University Law School last week, she said the nation’s commitment to reason and the rule of law “now falls under daily attack from those we once trusted to uphold them.” By contrast, her immediate predecessor as attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., recently blasted Attorney General William Barr as being “not fit” to lead the Justice Department.
Ms. Lynch said she would rather stick to commenting on policy disagreements. She said in the interview that she was concerned that the Justice Department was backing away from its commitment to civil rights, especially when it comes to dealing with community policing.
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Karen Savage
A nonprofit with ties to the fossil fuel industry has filed an ethics complaint against the New York attorney general’s office, alleging that Attorney General Barbara Underwood and two special assistant attorneys general are violating state ethics laws in their climate-related litigation against Exxon.
The Government Justice Center, led by board members who work for organizations that have received funding from oil industry and climate denial groups, alleges that Underwood is “accepting funding from an entity to conduct litigation by New York State on that entity’s behalf.”
The complaint alleges that Matthew Eisenson and Gavin McCabe, two special assistant attorneys general working on the office’s securities fraud case against Exxon as well as other work, are violating state law because they are paid through the NYU School of Law’sState Energy & Environment Impact Center.
Known as the State Impact Center, it wasestablished last year with funding fromBloomberg Philanthropies, a nonprofit founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to support state attorneys general in “defending and promoting clean energy, climate and environmental laws and policies.”
Eisenson and McCabe were both hired by the New York attorney general’s office through the State Impact Center’s fellows program. According to the Center’s website the Center “has offered all state attorneys general the opportunity to hire NYU Law Fellows to work under their direction as special assistant attorney generals on clean energy, climate change, and environmental issues.”
The Government Justice Center contends that Underwood’s office hired Eisenson and McCabe specifically to “help pursue a private party’s political and litigation agenda.” The Center says the use of the NYU fellows program also violates the law by giving the impression that Underwood’s office can be improperly influenced by Bloomberg.
The attorney general’s office said the arrangement violates no ethics laws and has been cleared by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
The Government Justice Center said the alleged violations stem from Eisenson’s and McCabe’s names being included in signature blocks of recent climate change-related litigation, including Underwood’ssuit against Exxon for securities fraud, and a friend-of-the-court brief supporting New York City’s climate liability suit against five major oil companies.
“The presence of the special assistants in those cases, funded by Mr. Bloomberg, raises questions regarding whether Mr. Bloomberg and the Center are unduly influencing decision-making and litigation,” wrote Cameron J. Macdonald, executive director and general counsel for the Government Justice Center, who wrote the complaint.
Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University who studies state attorneys general and their role in national policy making, said it is common for attorneys general to tap into the expertise of various interest groups.
“Overall I don’t see it [the complaint] as a particularly strong argument, in part because this type of arrangement has been very common amongst AGs for quite some time and that includes situations where AGs have worked with private class actionattorneys on a contingency fee basis, which has also raised ethics concerns, but generally speaking, courts across the country have allowed that arrangement to occur,” Nolette said.
“Clearly the [State Impact] Center has an agenda of ‘we want to fight climate change’ but that alone is not particularly unusual or what I would consider unethical,” he said.
“We don’t hide anything that we do,” said Christopher Gray, communications director for the State Impact Center. “We are not securities lawyers, we work on environmental policy. The idea that we’re directly involved in a meaningful way, doesn’t meet the facts.”
“This is another attempt by what appears to be a dark money group to de-legitimize the ExxonMobil investigation, which pre-existed the founding of the State Impact Center and which we don’t have any oversight or influence over,” Gray said.
According to its charity registration statement, the Government Justice Centerwas founded in 2016 to provide “public interest litigation focused on government waste, negligence, misappropriation and other improper actions.”
The organization’s board members include director James Copeland, a senior fellow and director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute. Exxon gave $115,200 to the Manhattan Institute in 2017 for public information and policy research. The group posted a Youtube video in March that was made to look like a real news story titled “The ‘Overheated’ Costs of Climate Change.” It featured former TV newscaster John Stossel, who interviewed senior fellow Oren Cass, who maintains that the costs of the climate crisis are overestimated.
Treasurer for the Government Justice Center is Brandon Muir, who is also the executive director ofReclaim New York, an organizationchaired by Rebekah Mercer. Since at least 2015, the Mercer Family Foundation has funded numerous organizations known forpromoting climate denial, including the Manhattan Institute and the Heartland Institute.
Tim Hoefer is president of the Government Justice Center and director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, which was aproject of the Manhattan Institute.
Government Justice Center director and retired judge Robert S. Smith, spent more than 25 years aspartnerat Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the firm hired by Exxon to defend itself against a growing number of climate change-related lawsuits, including Underwood’s securities fraud case.
The ethics complaint echoes a report published earlier this year by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which relied on public records requests to allege that attorneys general are involved in a coordinated scheme by private interests to persuade elected officials to hold oil giants responsible for climate change. That alleged conspiracy includes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is also investigating Exxon for possible fraud.
“This seems to me to be just one additional part of this massive brawl between the New York attorney general’s office, the Massachusetts attorney general and ExxonMobil. I’m not terribly surprised that they filed this ethics complaint, but it doesn’t strike me as something that’s really going to go anywhere,” Nolette said.
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https://readsludge.com/2020/02/22/not-just-exxon-paul-weiss-is-addicted-to-defending-the-worst-corporations/
no lnx
not Just Exxon: Paul Weiss Defends Many Rogue Corporations
From Big Tobacco to opioid crisis profiteering, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP has made millions from defending some of the most repugnant corporate villains of recent decades
PUBLISHED ONFEB 22, 2020
CLIMATEPRIMARY CATEGORY IN WHICH BLOG POST IS PUBLISHED
Gin Armstrong
@gin_armstrong
Gin Armstrong is a senior research analyst focused on regional and state power mapping.
See more
Derek Seidman
@derekseidman80
This article was first published at Eyes on the Ties, a news site by LittleSis.org
There’s no doubt about it: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is one of the most prestigious law firms in the U.S. Its attorneys rake in millions representing some of the most powerful corporate actors in the world. Its leaders serve as donation bundlers for major presidential candidates and Trustees for some of the nation’s most prominent universities. Last year, The American Lawyer named Paul Weiss “Law Firm of the Year” and “White Collar Litigation Department of the Year.” The firm’s New York City headquarters are just a skip away from Rockefeller Center and the Museum of Modern Art.
Coming out of law school, you’d think that snagging a cushy job at Paul Weiss would be every law student’s dream.But a growing number of law students are pledging to refuse to work for Paul Weiss – or even to interview with the firm – until it drops ExxonMobil as a legal client.
The campaign is called #DropExxon. It announced itself last month when Harvard Law students disrupted a Paul Weiss recruitment event at an upscale Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant. Paul Weiss attorney Ted Wells is Exxon’s lead attorney and also a Harvard Corporation Trustee.
The next disruption was three weeks later at Yale, and, days later, at New York University. This week, University of Michigan law students joined the protests. Barely a month old, the campaign is set to spread to other campuses.
[pix January 15, 2020 #DropExxon protest by Harvard Law students (Photo: Aaron Regunberg/Facebook)
Paul Weiss has served as lead counsel for ExxonMobil for years, representing the Big Oil giant against a host of climate lawsuits. Most recently, the firm successfully defended Exxon against a $1.6 billion lawsuit, brought by the State of New York, alleging that the company mislead investors over the risks of climate change. It was only the second climate change lawsuit to ever reach trial in the U.S.
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Overall, Paul Weiss has defended Exxon in at least a dozen climate liability cases brought about by states and municipalities. The firm’s legal tactics on Exxon’s behalf have been labeled everything from “blatantly obstructionist” to “disingenuous” by different state attorneys general.
Exxon is the biggest oil company in the U.S. It raked in $20.8 billion in profits in 2018. As the world faces a growing climate emergency, Exxon recently announced its intent to ramp up oil production by 80% in the world’s busiest oil field to 1 million barrels per day.This comes as a startling new report just revealed that the level of methane emissions released by fossil fuel companies is likely much worse than we previously thought.
In 2015, a wide-ranging series of investigations uncovered that, for decades, Exxon had conducted internal research on global warming and knew about the dire impact of its fossil fuel production in driving our growing climate crisis. All this was happening at the same time Exxon was funding climate denialism and working to crush attempts to regulate carbon emissions.
Now the public is aiming to hold Exxon accountable for this deception – and Paul Weiss is trying to defend Exxon from this.
Big firms like Paul Weiss face tight competition to recruit talent from top law schools. Organizers with #DropExxon see where they have leverage – Paul Weiss does not want to become the poster child for Big Law’s complicity with our climate crisis, a stigma stuck to its name among thousands of rising law students nationwide.
The campaign isn’t saying that corporations that destroy our planet should be denied lawyers – but rather, that young attorneys who care about justice have other options than to go work for these firms.
Moreover, when it comes to Paul Weiss, ExxonMobil is just one of the worst of its many questionable clients. From Big Tobacco to opioid crisis profiteering, Paul Weiss has made millions from defending some of the most repugnant corporate villains of recent decades:
Vouching for opioid crisis profiteers. Paul Weiss partner David M. Bernick is a lead attorney for Richard Sackler, the billionaire former president and chairman of Purdue Pharma, and other members of the Sackler family. The Sacklers have faced billions in lawsuits over their role in creating the nation’s opioid crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands. Richard Sackler was a leader of the company as it pushed doctors to prescribe OxyContin, while he blamed victims for their own addiction. Bernick has been a go-to defender of the Sacklers, even appearing on Good Morning Americato represent them. After it was revealed that Richard Sackler called opioid users “victimizers” responsible for their own fate, Bernick defended Sackler by saying he used insensitive language that didn’t “reflect what he actually did about the emerging problem of opioid abuse.”
Defending Big Tobacco. Paul Weiss represented Philip Morris in U.S. v. Philip Morris, the case in which Philip Morris was finally held liable for systematically concealing the health risks of smoking and marketing tobacco to children for decades. Notably, Ted Wells, who defended Phillip Morris, used an argument in court that was similar to Paul Weiss’ defense of Exxon – that Philip Morris now acknowledges the science proving the dangerousness of cigarettes and tobacco. This is very similar to Paul Weiss and Exxon’s position in The People of the State of NY v. Exxon Mobil, that “there is a serious problem relating to climate change, and we acknowledge that that problem is real and must be addressed.”
Defending Wall Street’s most egregious crooks. Several Paul Weiss partners, including Ted Wells, represented notorious hedge fund trader Steven Cohen and his firm SAC Capital – a firm that was once described as a “magnet for market cheaters”– in an insider trader case brought by the SEC. Cohen is a well-connected figure on Wall Street, major art collector, and minority owner of the New York Mets. SAC pled guilty to fraud and paid $1.8 billion in fines. While Cohen managed to evade criminal charges with the help of Paul Weiss, other high ranking SAC traders were convicted, including portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, who was sentenced to nine years in jail. As part of the settlement, Cohen was barred from managing outside money for two years. He’s since restructured SAC into Point72 Asset Management LP.
Protecting the NFL against its concussed players. Paul Weiss represented the National Football League in lawsuits brought against it by over 4,800 former players when it was revealed that the league systematically concealed and downplayed the extent of the dangers they faced from concussions they suffered as football players. In her defense of the NFL, Paul Weiss attorney Beth Wilkinson said, “Let’s be clear. Let’s be clear. We strong— we strongly deny those allegations that we withheld any information or misled the players.” Ultimately the NFL ended up settling with players for $1 billion, half of what players were seeking, leading many to appeal.
Big bank subprime lenders. A team of Paul Weiss lawyers helped Citigroup, a bank widely seen as a major actor in the housing foreclosure crisis, evade a lawsuit brought by investors who purchased collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were backed by subprime mortgages. The investors filing the lawsuit said that Citigroup misrepresented the CDOs, but Paul Weiss managed to cast doubt on whether Citigroup knew about the volatile structure of the CDOs they sold. Ultimately, however, Citigroup was forced to pay a fine of $7 billion for knowingly selling financial instruments tied to faulty mortgages.
Private equity raider who associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Paul Weiss lawyers have advised Apollo Global Management, the world’s 9th biggest private equity firm, on mergers and acquisitions with various companies, including ADT Corporation and Shutterfly. As is common with private equity firms, Apollo has been instrumental in bankrupting several of its takeovers, including Noranda Aluminum, Caesars, and Claire’s, which resulted in hundreds of job losses. Apollo was also a major bondholder of Puerto Rico’s debt. Apollo’s founder Leon Black has come under scrutiny in recent months because of his close business relationship to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. While Black has tried to play down his ties to Epstein, Black admitted that Epstein advised him on various tax and philanthropic strategies and advised other Apollo partners under Black’s direction. Epstein served as a director of Black’s family foundation for years after he was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida, though Black claims this was due to a “paperwork error.”
The list could go on.
Paul Weiss does not have to defend rogue corporate actors – it chooses to do so. Law firms have taken moral stands in the past against toxic clients. For example, in 1985, Covington & Burling, the largest law firm in Washington, D.C., dropped South African Airways after the firm faced boycotts from law students from Harvard, Yale, NYU, and other schools, who opposed the firm’s complicity with South African apartheid. More recently, attorneys at Davis Polk were allowed to decline representing Big Tobacco clients if they had moral or ethical objections.
Law students have options that don’t involve representing climate crisis profiteers. As the nation’s top legal talent graduate into a world of intensifying climate emergency, the pressure is mounting on firms like Paul Weiss to make a break with Big Oil. Related:
Lawyers Defending ExxonMobil Are Big Biden Donors
ExxonMobil Is Still Bankrolling Climate Science Deniers
Joe Biden’s Campaign Co-Chair is a Big Oil and Gas Booster
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